Gaming Gets Serious

American Demographics, May 1, 2002 by Hassan Fattah, Pamela Paul

Yet women have also begun to change their habits as they've grown more familiar with gaming, Groppe admits. Ha, for example, began participating in role-playing games six years ago and avoided more violent ones. But now, she says, she is more comfortable with adrenaline games like Counter-Strike, though she also likes to play quick games when she simply wants a break. "As the technology gets more amazing and more women begin to play, their interests will shift," says Groppe. "In the beginning, women didn't like adrenaline games. Now you find a lot more of them playing in that category."

Advergaming's Pitch

Demographics make advergaming a promising marketing tool. Banner ads failed, sponsorships have shown poor returns, but advergaming immerses targeted audiences in a company's brand for comparatively limited expense. Kent Mar, founder and CEO of San Francisco-based advergame developer Virtual Giveaway, for example, targets gamers based on four variables. First, the content of the game itself is tailored to suit the desired customer. Games of strategy can be directed to upscale, educated users, while action games can be geared to younger users. A second way to tailor the advergame is by the location through which the game is promoted - via, say, e-mail marketing campaigns or on Web sites. For instance, ESPN has 78 percent male users for its games, with 60 percent under age 34; Lycos Gamesville users are 60 percent female, and 65 percent are over age 35. The third method of tailoring content is the contest structure of the game - how users win. When Virtual Giveaway created an advergame for Sega Dreamcast, for example, it had a specific target: males under age 25, who are highly competitive and action-oriented. So the company created a game in which players would master the game and enter into a series of tiebreakers after a certain number of plays. Core users spent upward of 60 hours a week playing. A fourth type of targeting is based on geography, where demographic information is used to point gamers to such promotions as local retailers or dealers.

No matter how it is tailored, the key to successful advergaming is setting clear goals. "We find targeted games with strategic objectives laid out upfront are the most effective method," says YaYa's Chen. Chen, who with former colleague Matthew Ringel first coined the term "advergaming" while at New York City-based interactive firm , says some of the most successful efforts in the category tend to be those seeking to capture information about players.

Marketers can gather data through sweepstakes entries, from opt-in programs soliciting more details or by culling demographics from users who wish to post high scores. While there are restrictions on the kind of particulars that can be obtained from kids, adults can provide a wealth of information - from e-mail addresses and basic demographics like age, gender, address and income to favorite car color preferences.

Justin Galvin, director of business development for , says the proof of advergaming's success over other forms of online advertising is in its ability to start a dialogue with consumers. "Advergaming gives an ad a lot more depth," says Galvin. "Consumers are interacting with something that has value to them. They'll register to play a game; they'll log in to a database to play against each other; they'll come back to check scores. They'll continue to interact with the brand, offering marketers an ongoing opportunity."